D36 Last night

1/16 Sunny
Paris

I’ve always avoided to think about my last night in Paris, coz tonight is also the last night in Europe, too. I stayed on the hotel bed, felt a little sleepy but wouldn’t make myself fell asleep, I want to enjoy this moment, for the last time, at least in the following 5 to 6 years I don’t have plan to visit here again. I’ve forgot to write about what happened Milan and the first 4 days of Paris tour, but would find sometimg to finish my blog, I promise.

Metro sign

Thanks to Facebook, the separation of us is just geographical, but in conceptual, we can still talk or share stuffs together through the Internet. To find a friend seems not that hard, but keeep in long relationship is still a long way to go. I found that sometimes I like to travel alone, but more often times when I walked in the lonely street, taking meaningless photos, I always think about our roadtrip, our late summer trip to Nice or even went Lyon center for a beer; I miss guys in Lyon indeed.

I was lucky that the weather these days in Paris was fantastic! It’s plus 10 degree and no clouds in the sky, just bright sun shines. People in Paris went crazy for the yearly winter sale, almost everyone carried 2 to 3 shopping bags on the streets, this is not the normal Paris we’d seen.

We had a nice feast in a country restaurant, with former AIESEC LCP 黃觀, we also studied in the same dept in the same U. It’s nice to see her here, with a half local, walking on the streets of hotel de ville, searching for a place to sip an expresso, that’s what people usually do.

I guess it’s about time to wake up from a long long dream. It began in June and ended in January, tomorrow evening I will take the airplane home, to Amsterdam, Hong Kong and then home. It’s 1:53, I got to sleep ;)

Have a sweet dream!

D29&30 Back to basic

1/10,11 Cloudy, cold but yet snow
Budapest

I stayed in Budapest for 3 nights, the hostel was great with friendly staffs and good location, next to the main metro station and easily to find. There was one guy or lady I ain’t 100% sure, a dude with pony tail but I could see the adam’s apple, was quite funny. It was a 8 beds dormitory, while I checked in at 11 o’clock, the dude was sleeping deeply. I wonder he’s got a hangover or something, since I saw some wine bottle next to his bed. Then I dressed up then went out for some fun. After the sunset, I came back to hostel, I saw the dude still sleeping, until I got to bed at 1am. That was nothing, the next morning, I went out at 9, he’s sleeping still. I wonder this dude is sick or something wrong with him, then all of a sudden he woke up, had a cigratte then went to bed again. The next 2 nights same thing happened again and again. Conclusion: This dude paid hostel in Budapest for 4 nights but the only thing he did in the city was sleeping and smoke. Nice! I appreciate his attitude!

The little princess

The most famous and attractive thing to me in the city was its food! Goulash! the soup made of beef, onions, vegetables, spices and ground paprika powder, that I had almost everyday. I even bought 2 recipes and 2 cans of well-made goulash for taking them back to Taiwan. Until the last moment while I was waiting for flight to Milan, I had goulash as well :P

Goulash day1

Goulash day2

Noodle meat soup for day3

Talking about the other tourist stuff, I was quite impressed by the ability of recovery of hungarian people. The war almost destroyed everything, the opera, the palace, the parliment or any big or small significant buildings in the city. But you can see the city’s healed and show its uniqle beauty to people all over the world. In comparison to Prague, Budapest wasn’t that lucky.

Hero square

There are statues scattered in the city, you can see statues in almost every corner. That was fun, you have more surprises and stories when you lingered in the beautiful buildings. Or they played important roles when you got lost.

Statue of officer

Annonymous writer

I played safe during the nights in Budapest, I means, almost after every sunset I choose to go back to warm hostel, browsing Internet or streaming some videos in the kitchen, or even lay on my bed, just wrote some article. Technically I didn’t have  night life in Budapest.

Night

Chain bridge and the palace

I was a little bit tired of traveling all around, and didn’t find the right company to the bars, either. The brazillian guy slept next to me had serious stink foot problem, I would want to talk to him, coz he stinks :/ I don’t know, I’d prefer enjoy my personal mement, taking pictures, rambling on the streets, having good stuffs or foods, sometimes skype with my parents or friends would be enough.

The bathhouse

At the moment, I am tired of SURFACE friends, I’d prefer closer or intimate friendship, rather than facebook friend.

Parliment

All in all, I like the city quite a lot. It’s a city with cheap and delicious food, spetacular buildings and tons of hidden secrets. Budapest would be on my top 10 list of fav cities.

Liberty bridge

Central market

Little princess

D28 Whatulookinat?

1/9 Cloudy, foggy
Istanbul, Budapest

After the Lyon inccident, I always stay in high cautious when I walked alone on the street or after the sunset. I don’t feel like to face that kind of situation again in my life ever! Right now I carry a knife with me in any cases. But sometimes I got frightened when somebody closes to me, maybe just ask me to take photos for them, maybe ask for time or even ask for direction. Especially when teenager guys stronger than me, I felt like they might be a potential threat.

But things is not as well as I expect. You know, during the journey, I always try to keep the good memories.

I had to catch a morning flight from Istanbul to Budapest, which means I had to get out of house before the sunrise. It was still dark at 7am, I grabbed my luggage and went to the Taxi station, asked the driver took me to the bus station. Deniz told me the taxi fee would be 5 to 7 liras, and I had only 20 liras in my wallet, nothing more.(The bus ticket is 13 lira) The damn taxi driver took some loop to somewhere I don’t really know, then I had to pay 9 liras for taxi fee.

I realized that I am running out of liras, I couldnt even take the bus. So I had to withdraw money in ATM machine. The bus was 7:30, after I put my luggage in the storage was 7:20, I got 10 minutes left to the bank. It was like 200 meters away.

Anyhow, I need to catch my flight, so that I took my wallet with me, went for the ATM. When I almost done with the withdrawing, there were 2 guys seemed like drunk, looked at me with greedy eyes. I knew something might happened, so tried not to have eye contact with him.

But the guys kept looked at me with strange face expression, I was nervous, but pretend that I am Okay. I gave them a gaze and then kept waiting for the bill. The guys passed me but one of them tried to walk back, and he kept looking my wallet. Then there were the other guys and girls walked in the opposite direction, so he gave up. I knew that he tried to robbed my wallet, I got only 10 liras and a few coins inside, almost nothing left to lose, I could fight with him, but I needed to catch my bus desperately!

Finally nothing happened. I made it to catch the flight. Great! I thought that I could have something good in Budapest!

It wasn’t the best when I first talked to the people here. The custom officer checked my passport for 10 minutes, then asked me to take a seat.

the bronze officer

I knew anything might happened when the custom officer asked you to take a seat. I waited for 20 minutes and then he came to me,

We need to check out your passport, because I don’t know what’s that sticker for.

It was the OFII sticker made the custom became suspicious about me. The officers gathered together and discussed about my visa for 10 minutes. I prepared a voice recorder in my pocket, just in case. So I recorded everything they said.

The result went out to be alright, I could travel back to European Union again! But this situation made me rethink my ability to deal with crisis. I always think of the worst situation, like at least I can buy an expensive ticket to France, re-enter European Union country again. I never expect this stuff could happen to me, actually nobody did. I claimed that I have the resident right to live in France, in the name of the little yellow sticker.

9 of January, the 29th day of my travel, bad things happened, please never make it happen again!

D26& 27 He istanbul

1/7,8 Sunny, the sun shined bright!!!
Istanbul

Deniz became the most lovable Turkish guy in the world. He found me a place to stay, fed me with traditional food, took me to where only locals will be and he joked a lot. Deniz, he istanbul. The city always made me feel complicated but adorable, the ancient ruins, the religious muslim and some leftover of royal European pride, I love the city after Deniz’s re-introduction.

While I stayed in Cagatay’s home, I wonder if I should spend more than one day in Istanbul, the reason is that I’ve visited the city already back in 2006, at that time, Brian and I visited almost every important attractions in Istanbul, the blue mosque, the Aya sophia mosque, the topika palace or the new palace by the seaside. “There’s nothing new that I can see.” I thought in my mind, but I’d like to visit Deniz and other friends so that kept the original plan to stay for 2 days. I’m glad that I did.

Dinner at Deniz’s

I arrived in the late evening, we could barely do nothing but went out for a drink. I found that it’s quite refresh to see the city again, especially from a local’s perspective. Deniz took me to the old prostitude street, and the modern bar street. We hanged around Taksim, sneaking every little paths until I could recognize where we had been.

Deniz: The turks never think Mussle(French: moule) is a big deal. We have this stuff from a street vendor, who would spend 20 euros to eat the thing in restaurant?

I laughed after his claim, that’s true! Turkish vendors stuffed mussles with rice and spice, boiled them as a snack. 1 mussle with rice cost even less than 1 lira sometimes. And the kebap are everywhere, with different flavor.

Deniz: It’s kind of weird, the best Kebap I ever had was not in Turkey. I guess that’s because of the cost. In Turkey, kebap is a cheap food, so they use less meat to fill the bread; but in Europe, you pay 4 euros for a kebap: they use much more meat. But! The meat flavor in Turkey is much better!

People fished on the bridge

The other morning, I woke Deniz up and asked him take me the visit the city, that’s the only whole day I would spend in the city. I wanted something different. We went to the vintage market, where only locals went there to buy some antique furnitures.

Old time porn photos

That was funny to retro the old time Istanbul. We saw many things that you could not even imagine how to use them. And many antique stuff I liked a lot but incapable to bring them back. I took some photos in a shop, then the owner came to me, he said:

You should ask for my permission before you take photos, right?

I was sorry and never expect someone would got angry like that. I apologized to him and asked Deniz to get out of the shop. I think the owners of antique shops are some kind of weird in some ways.

Nice place! Good food!

Then Deniz took me to a hidden restaurant, they served the best food in Istanbul I guess. The restaurant is located in the first flood of spice market, the entrance is easily to pass by, and you’ll never expect there would be a fancy restaurant. Yes, only the locals or some clever tourist knew the place.

My dish, lamb leg with rice.

We had a wonderful meal, and I almost forget my homestay brother is still waiting for me :/ For 2 hours!!

Finally!

Tolga was the homestay brother back in 2006. I stayed in his home for 1 month, and almost spoke to each other by Google translator that time. We were close to each other, and he shared his romance to me LOL. His former girl friend was a chubby girl and his mother didn’t like the girl, but he loved her a lot!! That became a problem so the mother-son fighting occassionally happened.

Blue mosque.

His chubby ex was good at jealousy. The other day Tolga made me look his photos with every ex, and he siad that he’s gonna burn them coz the girl friend would be mad if she had seen the photos. I was confused and felt sorry for him, I said:

These photos are YOUR memories, please do not burn them. I will bring them back to Taiwan until the day you felt like to see these photos.

Right now, my homestay brother, got married 3 months ago, with the other girl. I don’t know if he remembered the photo stuffs or not. I ain’t ask him for returning the photos, it’s too hard to explain in Google translator actually, especially we use the mobile version.

Night

Tolga left me and went to his wife after 4 hours of Google translator talking. And I was waiting for Esra to call me after her exam. It turned out that she had no time to call me so that I returned to home. And decided to make something for Deniz and his cousins, in order to feedback the accommodation.

Egg-fried rice!

I made a simple Japanese-Chinese dish, we don’t even have a proper translation for this home-made dish. Directly translate will be “Fried rice covered by egg”. The recipe is simple, just friend the rice then make an egg omlette to cover the rice completely.

Together with Nejat and his friend

Anyway, the Saturday night dinner was funny, and I expect they would like my dish, who wouldn’t like friend ketch-up rice with eggs?

D23, 24, 25 Looking for something dumb to do

1/4,5,6 Cold
Ankara

My relaxation tour in Turkey went on a climax in Ankara, to be exact, in Cagatay’s home. Beer, nuts and trash movie filled out one whole day, thanks to Ebru, we spent one day visiting the city, but that would be far enough. Ankara is not a city for tourist, but my friends, Cagatay and Ebru made the city meaningful and relaxing.

Let’s hang out in Muslim bars

Ankara castle, 1000 years old

the night view from Cagatay’s home

We spent one dinner together, me, Cagatay and Ebru went to a modern restaurant in new city center of Ankara. I’ve been waiting this since the beginning of my travel. Ebru promised me if I were in Ankara, she would take me to a nice restaurant and drink raki together. I thought the place will be eating grill lamb next to camp fire in a cave and belly dancers surrounded us for tips; but it wasn’t. The restaurant named “EGE” means the best part of Turkey; and we had seafood in Anakara, a city far away from the sea.

  I like the decoration.

During the meal, we talked mainly about marriage. Both of my friends are 28 or 29 years old, at the end of 20-s especially for girls, the pressure (they give themselves) became fatal. I don’t know if Ebru’s drunk or not, she said she’s gonna marry in 3 or 4 monthes, I said that “Then you gotta find someone to marry!”

  Ebru, a desperated girl

Then the topic turned into jobs. Ebru is not happy with her current job, she did the same thing everyday, every week, the only thing changed in her job is the location: she has to move to a new office every month. I guess the pay is satisfied so that she wouldn’t quit this job anyway ;P

What kind of job will you do?
Option 1: Working 29 days a month unhappily, the only day you feel happy is the paying day.
Option 2: Working 29 days a month with happy mood, the only day you feel unsatisfied is the paying day.

Cagatay also didnt like is former job, either. So he quitted the job and went for exchange, tried to find a way to improve himself. Now the former company called him back but he’s gonna refuse them.

Ming will hopefully graduate in June and begin job hunting in March. He had refused by JnJ already but still try to find a job in big names. Right now he’s kind of interested in working in trade show or exhibition company.

Cagatay and his brother

To be honest, I did nothing special in Ankara, but I feel like to hang out will my friends, like Cagatay, we talked a lot in those 3 days, and I found myself meet a wonderful person. My first impression of him was a serious student but he got his own way to live. I decided to make friend with him right after I saw him, I am glad I did ;P

D21&22 My family in Bursa

1/2,3 Bright sky, sometimes cloudy
Istanbul, Bursa

Five years ago, I was a sophomore student in university, knowing nothing what to do in summer break, so that I did a “cool” thing, went to Turkey for internship. That was the first time I’ve heard the city Bursa. The night before I went there, I lied on the bed, wondering who will I met in the next 60 days, what gonna happen, I had a romantic feeling that maybe someone on the earth did the same thing as I did. Then I had the most influential internship experience in my life. After 5 years, I went back to Turkey, visited same places but people accompanied with me changed, and I’ve changed.

(2006) Visited the Sener family

(2006) Ane and papa

(2011) Ane and papa

(2006) Sener Sisters (up-mid, Rumeysa and right, Beyza)

(2011) Left to right, Rumeysa, Beyza and Ane

The reason I went back to Turkey is simple: meet old friends and relax from the long journey. So you can find that I didnt wrote too much articles about what I’ve done here.

Ulu Camii

I was glad to see my Turkish sister had grown so fast, both of them are almost taller than me. Time flies, I remebered Beyza was the little girl drew the flag to Taiwan to me, and she became a teenager with a wonderful life.

I found my family had adapted into a new life path, the eldest son, Mert left the house for university, Rumeysa and Beyza study high schools right now, the most important thing to them are music, vollyball and facebook. Ane started a new career with Avon lady, and Kadir, the papa working hard to pay the mortgage of the newly bought house.

I didn’t expect to interrupt their life for too long, so that I decided to leave them. Before I went the Ankara, I made the girls promised me that they have to learn English. Kadir promised me that I will always have a home in Bursa, with the lovely Sener family. ;)

(2006) Beyza